In trademark pink or lavender no less!
Concerns generated by lack of clarity
on Synod voting procedures
[Aren't we all psyched up already for another rigged Bergoglio synod?]
Oct. 1, 2018
Pope Francis’s apostolic constitution, Episcopalis Communio, allows for the final synod document to have magisterial weight, but the question remains whether there will be propositions.
The organizers of the Synod on
'Young People, the Faith and Vocational Discernment' [What a load of pompous claptrap signifying nothing!], which begins Wednesday, are not being clear whether propositions will be included in the final document and voted upon, as they have been in past synods.
Although the final document has to be approved in its entirety by a two-thirds majority of the synod’s voting members, Bishop Fabio Fabene, undersecretary of the Synod of Bishops, has said it remains an open question if propositions will be part of the final document, each of which would require a two thirds majority to pass.
“We have to see how the document will turn out,” Bishop Fabene told the Register Oct. 1 at a presentation of the synod at the Vatican, but added: “If there are various numbers like last time, they will need two-thirds.”
The absence of a vote on each proposition has previously been thought to limit debate. Ahead of the 2015 Ordinary Synod on the Family when the idea of shelving propositions was suggested, 13 cardinals voiced their disapproval, among other concerns, in a letter to Pope Francis ahead of the meeting. The cardinals' initiative enabled the ballot on propositions to stay.
“The absence of propositions and their related discussions and voting seems to discourage open debate and to confine discussion to small groups,” the cardinals wrote. “Thus, it seems urgent to us that the crafting of propositions to be voted on by the entire synod should be restored.” They also said “voting on a final document comes too late in the process for a full review and serious adjustment of the text.”
If an attempt at the upcoming synod to omit the propositions were to succeed, it potentially could be even more problematic now that the final document may become part of the papal magisterium, subject to the Pope’s approval, as decreed by Pope Francis in his recent apostolic constitution, Episcopalis Communio (Episcopal Communion). In the past, final documents did not hold such weight, but Episcopalis Communio changed that last month.
Some believe that not having synod fathers vote on individual propositions would enable the synod organizers to more easily push through contentious proposals, such as the inclusion of 'LGBT,' the acronym used by the homosexual lobby.
Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, secretary general of the Synod of Bishops, said yesterday he had no intention of removing the acronym from the Instrumentum Laboris, the synod working document, despite young people not asking for it to be included.
Knowing the number of votes for each proposition has proved a useful tool for revealing the points of unity, and of division, at various synods.
At the end of the Ordinary Synod on the Family in 2015, 265 synod fathers voted on 94 propositions, all of which obtained a two-thirds majority
. But the most controversial ones, related to admitting some remarried divorcees to Holy Communion, only barely managed to do so (No. 85 scraped by with just one vote but was deemed enough of a mandate for the Pope to include the change in his post-synodal apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia).
Furthermore, the numbers revealed that
those controversial propositions would not have passed had the Pope’s personally-chosen synod fathers not been present.
The two-thirds rule for propositions was equally instructive during the first Synod on the Family in 2014, as
two paragraphs on admitting some remarried divorcees to Holy Communion and a third on welcoming homosexuals failed to obtain a two-thirds majority.
Pope Francis nevertheless controversially broke with custom, which he can do, and authoritatively insisted that all three rejected proposition be kept in the document, thereby enabling them to be carried over into the working document for the Ordinary Synod on the Family the following year.
The lack of clarity from the synod secretariat on the voting procedures during this synod is therefore a cause for concern for some observers who believe that, coupled with other problematic aspects, possible manipulation may again be afoot.
[Does anyone really doubt that at this point? We have seen enough examples cited earlier in this blogpost alone that Bergoglio will do anything, is hellbent indeed, to get what he wants by hook or by crook (and I don't mean his papal crook!)]
Here is a very appropriate reflection about young people - in every generation - on the eve of this fatally flawed farce of a synod:
From the Gen-X file:
What has become of those
'Pope John Paul II Catholics'?
10/1/2018
“We’ve had enough of exhortation to be silent! Cry out with a hundred Thousand tongues. I see that the world is rotten because of silence.” – St. Catherine of Siena
Early in his papacy, St. Pope John Paul II told young people that he had given up on the “generation of people my age” and would be directing his efforts to catechize the “young generation” — now called “Gen X” — about their vocation as Catholics.
It wasn’t simply that the former had their day to witness to the faith, John Paul II said, re-echoing the aphorism “the future belongs to the young.” No, if the Church was to enter a new Springtime — a new Easter — it would be those young people at the vanguard.
Putting recent revelations and events into context, the heinous misconduct and its coverup that is currently being brought forth from the darkness into the light of day — what perhaps may be (and quite likely is) only the tip of the iceberg — t
ranspired at the behest of the some of those in that “generation of people my age” about which St. Pope John Paul II spoke. To paraphrase St. Catherine of Siena, the Church is rotten because of their silence.
St. Pope John Paul II reiterated his challenge to the youth of the United States several times beginning in the late 1970s and through the 1990s, most notably at the Louisiana Superdome in 1987 when he said:
Yes, dear young people, I too want to speak about your mission, theReason for your life on earth, the truth of your lives. It is extremely vital for you to have a clear idea of your mission, to avoid being confused or deceived.
In speaking to the Christians of his time, Saint Paul explicitly Urged them: “Let no one deceive you in any way” (2 Thessalonians 2-3). And today I say the same to you, young people of America: “Let no one deceive you in any way” — about your mission, about the truth, about where you are going. Let no one deceive you about the truth of your lives.
Three years later, John Paul II once again told the nation’s youth who had gathered in St. Louis:
Ask yourselves: Do I believe these words of Jesus in the Gospel? Jesus is calling you the light of the world. He is asking you to let your light shine Before others. I know that in your hearts you want to say: “Here I am, Lord. Here I am. I come to do your will” (Responsorial Psalm; cf. Hebrews 10:7). But only if you are one with Jesus can you share his light and be a light to the world. Are you ready for this?
Those young people today are in their 30’s and 40’s. Some were “ready for this” and have been belittled as “John Paul II Catholics.” Why? They love the Catholic faith and the Mass (in both its pre- and post-1962 form), understand the truth of
Humanae Vitae, detest the murder of innocent babies and those judged a burden on society, and want basic, common morality taught in every school to every child. In short, they stand foursquare against what St. Pope John Paul called the “voices of the culture of death.”
In light of those recent disclosures of heinous, criminal clerical sexual misconduct, pedophilia, and coverup on the part of some of that “generation of people my age,” I ask about that generation of young people :
- Are they going to sit by in silence and allow the smoke of Satan in the temple of God to destroy the Church?
- Are they going to sit by in silence and despair as the false voices of the world exploit their hope?
- Are they going to sit by in silence, seeking spiritual and moral comfort elsewhere or nowhere?
St. Pope John Paul II charged these now-middle-aged adults with ushering a new Springtime into the Church. More importantly, they are the spouses and parents who are hopefully smack in the middle of raising a new generation of saints.
Are they, as the first and best teachers of their children in the faith, instructing them by the words and actions to hold to the truth of Christ and to be invincible in hope, the onslaughts of doubt, and the cancer of despair that threatens the Church from within today?
Silence is not an option for Catholics!
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 03/10/2018 18:38]